A Glibertarians Exclusive: Breaking Out, Part I
Sector Five, Level Eight, Thunberg-121
Denver G-126 (he/him) was excited as he left his Minimal Personal berth. Helena R-223 (she/her) was meeting him for a quiet dinner, and Denver had reserved a personal booth in the Sector Five Refectory. The dinner would be largely soy patties and 3-D printed proteins, with nothing but recycled water to drink, but Denver was excited all the same.
As he walked through the crowded corridors of the self-contained Modern City of Thunberg-121, he mentally reviewed everything he had gone through to arrange the date:
- Before speaking to Helena, Denver had checked with the Cultural/Racial Rectification Authority and confirmed that Helena R-223 (she/her) was certified compatible with Denver in racial and cultural privilege level, gender identification and amativeness.
- Denver had properly filled out the Social Interaction Permissions form, Helena had countersigned without any alterations to the agreed interaction guidelines (personal contact by handshake, hugs allowed on spoken assent of both parties) and had submitted the completed form to the Social and Sexual Interaction Regulation Authority. After the date, both Denver and Helena would have twenty-four hours to confirm that those guidelines had not been exceeded, on pain of fine and/or confinement.
- Denver’s Weekly Ration Allowance contained enough credits to cover his planned protein draw to go along with the soy ration.
This was dating in the 22nd century in one of the Modern Cities of the North American People’s State.
Denver looked up at the great dome covering the city. As usual, the sky was a dark red; gusts of wind blew black dust over the dome. The environmental calamity brought about by the selfishness of the capitalist governments of the early 21st century was still, as always, right there outside the safe, protected, self-contained city dome.
Denver harbored some doubts about that. The winds never seemed to change direction, and one gust of black dust seemed much like all the others. Wouldn’t the weather change from day to day? He was careful to keep those thoughts to himself; voicing doubts about the history inculcated in them in the People’s Academies would lead to demerits in his Social Credit Score, and a concomitant denial of services.
Indeed, just his insistence on traditional pronouns had already prompted some interviews with officials of the Cultural/Racial Rectification Authority, concerned about Denver’s “adherence to patriarchal norms associated with the racist and sexist standards of the past.”
His Social Credit Score had taken a five-demerit hit after the latest of those interviews, but Denver felt some pride in standing firm. He was a Kinsey 1.2, confirmed in the mandatory Sexual Preference testing he had taken at ages six, ten, sixteen and twenty, and felt the traditional pronouns best suited him.
Overhead, the display of environmental ruin gave way to the afternoon newscast. The face that took up the display was (for most people) comfortably androgynous and neutral in skin tone.
The newscast began:
“This is Fionellia B-344, ‘they/them.’ Communications with neighboring Modern Cities are still disrupted by the ongoing environmental conditions outside the dome. A carefully chosen team of experts, selected by the People’s Bureau of Equity in Repair and Maintenance Functions, have now been approved as having an acceptably diverse mix of gender identities, cultural and racial backgrounds and sexual preferences. Work on restoring communications is expected to begin in the next Designated Work Week.”
“The People’s Equity Court today sentenced captured thought-criminal Gerard T-226 to six months in penal retention and one year in accelerated re-education and re-orientation, after xe was found guilty of expressing incorrect thoughts about the gender identity of another xerson using the Sector Six Refectory. The People’s Equity Court released a statement condemning the presumption of gender expressed by Gerard T-226, and all nine members of that Court will be retiring for extensive therapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder brought on by their reading of the transcripts of the thought-criminal’s statements.”
“In other news, the People’s Council for Spreading Truth and Preventing Disinformation has made a statement…”
Denver tuned out the rest of the newscast. He was so sick of the approved news. Every day, he thought, it seems to get more bland, more approving of anything the People’s Councils do, more ignoring of all of us down here in the corridors. Sooner or later, everyone will be sick of it. I wonder what will happen then?
He knew he was supposed to stop and pay attention to the approved news, but he had other things on his mind, and was willing to risk another demerit on this Social Credit Score if anyone noticed his disregard of the approved news. He could see Helena R-223 ahead, near the entry to the Sector Five Refectory, waving to him.
Helena was, to Denver’s improper thinking, attractive. She was a little shorter than Denver, who would have been considered very small by 21st century standards; generations of restricted, environmentally conscious diets had seen to that. Both young people were thin and pale despite their enforced “diverse” ethnic backgrounds, with wavy black hair. Helena was a tad lighter-skinned than Denver, and he was afraid that her lighter skin tone may have cost her points on her Social Credit Score, but he had never asked her about it.
Denver had heard rumors that in olden times, men were noticeably taller and stronger than women, but he wasn’t sure whether to believe it. He smiled tightly to himself as he hurried towards Helena. Despite exercise plans being proscribed as “ableist,” he had spent the last few months doing surreptitious pushups and sit-ups in his Minimal Personal’s tiny bathroom, the only place in his quarters not “observed” by government-run cameras. The government repeatedly denied that these cameras existed, but everyone knew they did. He knew Helena had been secretly exercising as well.
Denver and Helena were planning something.
“I greet you, Denver G-126,” Helena said as Denver walked up.
“I greet you, Helena R-223. How was xir day?”
“Fine. Shall we go in?” Helena winked at Denver.
They presented their approved Social Interaction Permissions form to the attendant and were shown to the small booth, surrounded by “privacy screens” that both knew did little to ensure privacy. So, to evade curious eyes and ears, they spoke in an informal code while eating their soy patties and protein blocks.
“Are you ready for the next Designated Work Week?” Helena asked, meaning: Have you thought about the plans we discussed?
“Of course,” Denver replied. “I’m always ready to do my part for society.” I’m ready to do it. I’ve saved enough protein and soy to last three days, like we talked about.
“Everyone I know feels that way,” Helena agreed. Our co-conspirators are ready, too.
“Do you know where you’re working yet?” Do we know how to get outside the city dome?
“Soy harvest, like usual.” Brietta U-626 has plans for the lower maintenance levels, including the access ports and egress hatches.
“Do you have your work uniform ready?” Have we got the respirators and protective gear for the environment on the Outside?
“Oh, yeah. I’m ready.”
They made small talk over the balance of the meal, and when the standard meal timer chime rang, they vacated the booth so the next shift of diners could move in.
“Shall I set another time for us to eat together?” Denver asked as they went back out into the teeming corridor. When are we going to make the attempt?
“Sure, I’d like that. A week from tonight? That gives us time for meal arrangements and the social permissions.” One week from tonight, we’ll do it.
The two young people smiled and went their separate ways, without so much as a handshake to draw the attention of the Social Interactions Assessment cameras.
We’ve waited long enough, Denver thought as he walked away from the Refectory. Long enough. It’s time something changed. It’s time people learned that things can change.
***
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’
Sector Five, Level Eight, Thunberg-121
Denver G-126 (he/him) was excited as he left his Minimal Personal berth. Helena R-223 (she/her)
Oh no. Dystopian nightmare inbound.
Makes me think of the movie Just Imagine.
Reminds me of the opening episode of “Blake’s Seven.”
I like it.
Sweet!
At first I was repulsed. Now I’m stoked!
Thanks, Animal. As usual your imagination snapped another leash. I can’t wait to see where it goes
The Plan
Lol, same.
The Plan.
Excellent.
“For the times they are a-changin’ ”
If you wrote this 10 years ago, nobody would know what you were talking about.
I think if you put this on someplace like Vox, there would be an epidemic of masturbation-related injuries.
But good job, you grabbed my attention as always.
I like it.
Disturbing, but not in a SugarFree way.
Wonder what they are planning?
This is why Dennis Leary was living in the sewers, happily eating rats.
They’re going to go Outside.
I suspect outside is a perfectly fine and clean natural environment.
Shades of Red Rising by Pierce Brown. The elites kept the lower caste people working underground on the Mars terraforming project – decades after the terraforming was done and the air breathable. They just didn’t want the scum up on the surface where they’d have to see them,
I got that, but I’m curious about what they have planned for after that.
Or maybe they are just sightseeing, since they do think they are being lied to.
Good story, Animal.
They’re gonna fuck.
Go on…
Hmmm. Two young people agreeing to another date but NOT making use of the preapproved hug? That would make me suspicious.
I had a similar thought.
Only if they were gay or trans. It kind of follows that hetero-normativity would be scrutinized/suppressed to a greater degree.
If they were gay or trans, they’d probably have their date pre-approved for the Sector Five Copulation Facilitation and Enhancement Center. If they had enough credits, they’d be able to use the orgazmotron.
Excellent, Animal.
A bit of a Wool vibe (which is a good thing).
I’m in the middle of reading Asher’s ‘Owner’ series, so dystopianism all around!
Is Pie still on? I hope this isn’t a prelude to a big escalation.
https://twitter.com/Cyberspec1/status/1630133021629349888
#fakenews
That’s just Andrew Tate’s prisoner transport escort.
I always wondered if I’d be lucky enough to see WWIII.
We shouldn’t be Russian to conclusions here.
If the war expands, soviet.
Not germane to the story
“Russia will no longer rely on anyone when it comes to creating favorable external conditions for the country’s development, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.”
Maybe that trip to the Kremlin by the ChiComs didn’t go as well as planned.
They may be headed to Transnitria.
…where Russian troops are stationed.
Yup
And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s happening as Bakhmut is falling.
Dood, you should expand this to a novel and publish. It has major shades of Zamyatin’s “We” and this is the stuff we need right now.
^Seconded
Thirded
Yes, this is cool. I’m not sure St. Greta makes it out of history unscathed — she will eventually run afoul of her own.
I’m too often surprised when a new story starts because I don’t know the lyrics well enough to recognize the end.
Me too. I was expecting more Adolf.
Sweet. I am getting a positive vibe from this. I sincerely hope Denver and Helena adopt some old-time names once they are outside and get to know each other better.
Like Adam and Eve?
The Bee delivers yet again.
At publishing time, creators of the film were already brainstorming potential future installments of the franchise, including Relapse Bear, Cocaine Bear Hits Rock Bottom, and the natural conclusion of the series — Cocaine Bear Runs for Congress.
OMGOMGOMG U GUIZE!
The metric system now has NEW PREFIXES
https://www.bipm.org/en/cgpm-2022/resolution-3
SQUEE!!!!
“ronna”?! Really?! C’mon, people, wake up!
I remember when a petabyte seemed like an ridiculously large SciFi number. Now I regularly see graphs with a PB suffix.
Will it be robi and qubi for binary prefixes?
They’re updating their accounting software for the next round of budgets from Congress.
Minor rant: At least there was a bit of consistency with capital letters generally being for 10^positive and small letters for 10^negative. For example, M=Mega, m=milli, D=Deca, d=deci (ignore that k for kilo). This throws all that away. /pedant mode OFF
This still keeps that: R and Q for positive, r and q for negative.
You’re right. Reading FAIL on my part.
M=10^6, m=10^-3
Belay, misread. Yes, kilo through off capitalization consistency. The 1991 and later values also have letter consistency.
Deka is actually da.
‘quecto’
Really? They’re just trying to make some of these difficult to pronounce.
They should have used quanto.
Relevant.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j2etakoV-rg
Quando, quando quando!
*fist-bumps R.J.*
That’s immediately where my mind went.
I think my old roommate is still his tour drummer. That’s gotta be a strange gig.
I wonder if he sings Lesbian Seagull on tour? Supposedly that gave his career a boost.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_uSGPmYmJc0
10 quetzalcoatlbytes of storage
Do you know how many hearts need to be ripped out annually to maintain that?
Sacrifices must be made to maintain
Q’s porn collectionthe valuable knowledge coming out of our DEI programs.I bid 2 quettaquatloos for…
Applause.
I think they get caught, as there have to be cameras in their bathrooms. Plus when it gets to this point, they’ll have internal tracking devices from their weekly vax.
Can’t help myself.
Today in agitprop
While tension between city halls and state capitols has long been a fixture of American government, experts say the fights are becoming more frequent – and more high-stakes – as the nation’s politics become more polarized and acrimonious.
One 2021 study found that GOP legislators were more likely than their Democratic colleagues to vote for proposals to limit local governments’ authority, and that those efforts were most common over “hot button” issues like guns and LGBTQ rights.
In some cases, rural legislators target liberal cities as “a way to score political points” and “pour a little more gas on the culture wars,” said Keith Boeckelman, a political science professor at Western Illinois University, who co-authored the paper.
This is tacked onto the end of an article about how white conservatives in the statehouse are trying to “subjugate” the city of Jackson, Mississippi by attempting to get control of the crime rate.
“Limiting local governments’ authority” wouldn’t be such a big deal if they’d stick to their goddam knitting and worry about arresting criminals and filling potholes instead of trying to re-write (or shred) the Constitution.
“experts say”
Insert Picard (you know the one) GIF here.
I’ve been laughing at this all morning:
https://media.notthebee.com/articles/article-63fcc2bd92f03.jpg
How likely is it that totalitarian societies that crush meritocracy would be able to sustain such high level technology as building domes and spying networks? I find Rand’s assumptions about what would happen to modern technology – that is, collapse and inability to maintain, let alone build back, the technological structure that provides for civil society – to be far more likely.
I think there was a hint of that there:
“This is Fionellia B-344, ‘they/them.’ Communications with neighboring Modern Cities are still disrupted by the ongoing environmental conditions outside the dome. ”
Given that there are probably no ‘environmental conditions’ causing the problem, they don’t know how to maintain their equipment.
Or maybe there are no other Modern Cities.
Or, the others have all abandoned the insanity long and thus communication needs to be cut off as with north korea.
slave labor and espionage?
Automated maintenance systems.
Oooh, or…
Modern Cities are a humane way of containing the dependent class away from the rest of society?
And escaping proves you’re worthy of freedom?
I like this ending better.
And then everyone dies from a plague contracted by a dirty telephone.
A.I.?
Friend Computer!
This really ties perfectly into the Asher ‘Owner’ series I’m in the middle of. I literally just read this during lunch:
“City of Thunberg”
This made me laugh, the rest made me cry. And then I considered they we are really a few steps down this road already. It’s just a difference of degree.
“Our co-conspirators are ready, too.”
They’re screwed. Or at least he is. Which of them will be in the FBI (or whatever they call it)?
Big fat spring snowflakes are falling from the sky.
Yay.
Speaking of Thunberg, Greta- there is a new story about how she and her cohorts are protesting a wind plantation on “indigenous” land. Because the real goal is not “carbon free” energy, it is an energy free world. We should all be like those reindeer ranchers and light and heat our homes by burning reindeer shit.
‘He was a Kinsey 1.2, confirmed in the mandatory Sexual Preference testing he had taken at ages six, ten, sixteen and twenty, and felt the traditional pronouns best suited him.’
I shudder to think what the testing entails for those poor six and ten year olds.
Private sessions with sex education teachers?
“Out of all the things we made little Timmy and Sally suck and fuck, they found these the least objectionable…”
You mean little Bismark and Spokane.
Those are white cis-shitlord cities…..
Compton and Portland would get less demerits right off the bat
Ah, true. City names only now.
…poor Bald Knob and Spunky Puddle.
Intercourse and Climax hurt most.
Along the lines of this lunatic future, I present to you ePAS, an electronic work permitting platform where you have to fill out paperwork before engaging in productive work of any type.
https://www.prometheusgroup.com/solutions/environmental-health-safety
Talked to a supervisor at an accelerator facility this morning where they will probably implement this. He estimates that combined with their current safety regs, they won’t be able to perform any actual work until somewhere between 2 and 3 pm each day because they will spend the rest filling out the forms and asking permission.
I assume they all start at 7, so that’s 0-1 hours of actual work before the safety-mandate end of shift hits.
You are correct.
This particular facility is already a case study in safety bureaucrats run amok.
Their name gives me a sad, since it overlaps with the excellent monitoring solution I spend much of my day on.
Perfect.
Gun gossip/drama!
https://www.lawow.org/brandon-roper-v-black-rifle-coffee
Kinda gay.
Holy crap. That’s all kinds of crazy.
Still funny that the SF guy got smoked by an accountant.
Larry Correia has to be loving this story.
I’m guessing this guy isn’t Larry-sized.
Just sounds like a normal day in San Fran.
” Mr. Evans made the comment to him that the strip club was the first time Mr. Roper has probably ever seen a vagina up close. ”
Am I a bad person for laughing at that?
No worse than me, if that helps.
That’s movie material right there.
Cinemax?
I feel for that dude so much. 🙁
Oh yeah. Feeling trapped in a toxic job would be one of the rings in Hell if Dante wrote the Inferno today.
What a shock. Dipshit company is ran by a dipshit.
I was listening to a JBP podcast last night and BRCC was a heavy advertiser.
Commercials started funny. Coffee was always amazingly boring.
Didn’t the same guy tell his customer base to get fucked at one point? He went anti gun or something, right?
Kind of. He did an interview with the NYT where he agrees with the “lol, stoopid racist gun nuts” stereotype.
I had to look it up. He started refuting his customer base shortly before Kyle Rittenhouse, and now continues. Doesn’t want so called extremists wearing his advertising.
Hey, and Mat Best has a cameo in the filing! Apparently his video persona is the same as in person. Another shocking development.🙄
Is it normal that the HR person gets a commission on the health insurance policies? Because that seem sketchy AF.
This part doesn’t bother me.
And, I have an article coming up where I shit on BRCC in passing. That was written before I found out about the lawsuit.
“In February 2017, Matt Best, another owner of BRCC, openly teased Mr. Roper because he had never had anal sex with a woman.”
Sounds like it’s not women these guys want to have anal sex with.
It gets lonely out there in the bush.
I didn’t think they were Navy vets.
We bit of excitement in the Dayton area – tornado warnings. My coworkers and I just got the all-clear to come up from the basement, and my house seems to be out of danger, but nearby areas to the east aren’t yet. Heads up, mid-Ohio Glibs!
Yikes, stay safe, Ohio Glibs
No kidding. Be safe, peeps!
Great current events article, Animal. Your stuff is always up-to-date and of interest. Those cancelling Doug Adams will be looking for a replacement and you can expect an interview.
OTOH it looks like Black Rifle is shorthanded right now and needs someone that won’t out shoot the CEO.
Thanks